Pel and the Predators

by Mark Hebden

  Misset would have to be pulled up sharply again, Pel decided. Misset spent most of his career being pulled up sharply. Misset was like that. His marriage produced a lot of children but not much love and Pel regularly heard of girls in the typing pool complaining of his attentions.

  De Troquereau, meanwhile, was still absorbed with Boyer’s missing ducks. Cholley was little more than a hamlet that rarely saw a car, and Boyer’s poultry were all over the dusty road, together with two pigs and a couple of dogs drowsing in the sunshine. Boyer’s wife was a cheerful matronly woman free with the wine who was more than taken with De Troquereau. He was slight, neatly built, and handsome, and she’d discovered somehow that he was a baron – Charles-Victor De Troquereau Tournay-Turenne. Because he was as poor as a church rat, De Troq’ tended to keep quiet about his title and she felt his reticence was the innate modesty of a born aristocrat, something which could hardly be true when you considered the car he drove, an open tourer with a belt across the bonnet and headlamps like searchlights.

  ‘They were my ducks rather than my husband’s,’ she told him. ‘It’s always the tradition that the farmer’s wife has the poultry for pin money.’

  She led De Troq’ across the dusty farmyard into a field where there were three huts, two containing laying hens, the third empty and with a hole in the side where boards had been levered off.

  ‘That’s where he got in,’ she said.

  ‘Was it this chap, Jeanneny, do you think?’

  She laughed. ‘Of course not, mon brave,’ she said. ‘He just once put one across my husband over a cow he sold, and my husband’s never forgiven him.’

  ‘Were the ducks always put up here?’

  ‘Every night at 7.30. There’s a pond at the end of the field. They have to have water. Ducks are a bit special. They like to forage for grass and worms and they don’t take kindly to the intensive breeding and laying you can go in for with hens.’

  ‘Valuable?’

  She drew herself up. ‘They’re thoroughbreds. Indian Runners. Dark brown. Stand upright like penguins. Bred for laying. They can produce up to three hundred eggs a year.’ She smiled at De Troq’. ‘Find me those ducks,’ she said, ‘and you’ll get half a dozen bottles of the finest wine we’ve got. And I’ve got a brother with a vineyard south of Beaune.’

  De Troq’ smiled back. ‘We’re not allowed to take gifts,’ he said.

  Madame Boyer laughed. ‘I’m not offering gifts, mon brave,’ she said. ‘It’s a good honest bribe.’

  Pel had not told Madame Faivre-Perret about Duche’s threat and the arrival of the letter bomb and they had managed to keep it out of the newspapers. For all Duche knew, it was still hanging about the Hôtel de Police waiting to blow Pel’s head off and it was better that he should be kept guessing so he wouldn’t send another. It didn’t suit Pel not to tell Madame but he didn’t wish to worry her unnecessarily, because she actually seemed to relish the idea of being married to him. It was something he still found hard to understand because, studying himself in the mirror as he shaved, he couldn’t see what she saw in him.

  Didier had disappeared but so, thank God, had Madame Routy. While visiting her sister, she had gone down with some sort of plague which was confining her to bed, and a message had been sent via the next door neighbour. Since Pel had felt obliged to inform her of the letter bomb when he’d instructed her not to touch any mail that arrived, he suspected she’d got the wind up.

  He could hardly blame her – handling bombs wasn’t the métier of a middle-aged housekeeper. But, if nothing else, it meant that – bliss! – Pel had the house to himself, without the television roaring away all the time like a jumbo taking off, and with the ‘confort anglais’ free whenever he wanted it. It meant providing his own breakfast, of course, even an occasional meal later in the day when Madame Faivre-Perret was too occupied with her business affairs to offer one. But that was easily overcome. For his breakfast he stood, as he’d stood on and off for years, at the counter of the Bar Transvaal opposite the Hôtel de Police with a coffee and a croissant while, on Darcy’s orders, Aimedieu kept an eye on the rest of the custom just in case. For the other meals he existed on tins of tripes à la mode de Caen – bought not by himself but on Darcy’s instructions by Cadet Martin at a city supermarket – which were infinitely better, despite coming out of tins, than anything Madame Routy cooked.

  Despite the threat hanging over him, he was well content. Only his smoking troubled him. Millions of other people stopped smoking. Why couldn’t he? Madame Faivre-Perret’s decorous salutations, he felt, must seem to her like kissing an ash tray. Besides, it cost him a fortune. Without it he would smell sweeter and have more money in his pocket, and, with the amount of carbon monoxide he absorbed, he might just as well stick a car exhaust up his nostrils.

  He had even taken the trouble to write for a pamphlet the government had issued to help people. Its chief suggestion was to throw away his cigarettes and as advice that was a dead loss, because no sensible Burgundian could be expected to throw away something he’d paid good money for. He would either have to get someone to knock him on the head or accept that he was going to end up cancerous, arthritic, asthmatic, blind, deaf and stupid.

  The morning was occupied with studying the newspapers. Pel always liked to know what they were thinking. Under French law, they were allowed to make comments on police cases and most of them were quite uninhibited about matters that were sub judice, making wild statements and generally pointing an accusing finger in the wrong direction. However, there were times when they were helpful because Pel had long since noticed that a leak to them printed across the front page at a time when he could expect a criminal he was after to be still a little nervous could lead to panic, which never failed to be a help.

  Martin had laid the newspapers on his desk, all the relevant items ringed with red pencil. Martin liked to think himself a good judge of what Pel ought to see and behaved at times like the editor of France Soir. They carried all the latest scores for murder, arson, extortion, embezzlement, breaking and entering, sedition, pimping, offences against public morals, robbery with violence, cruelty to children, bombs, acid throwing, sale of drugs to minors, adulteration of foods, counterfeiting, smuggling, perjury, incitement to desertion, and non-assistance to persons in danger. They also all carried the photographs of the Pigny girl across the front page, Le Bien Public with a certain amount of discretion, France Soir filling almost half the page with trumpeting headlines: DEAD GIRL’S MYSTERY LIFE. WHERE DID SHE SPEND HER DAYS?

  What they’d discovered – or failed to discover – from Arne had been sent to Inspector Le Bihan and that, Pel felt, was the end of his part in the affair. He was very surprised, therefore, when he returned from lunch with Judge Polverari to find a note on his desk from Cadet Martin.

  ‘Substation at Mongy telephoned,’ it said. ‘Please ring Brigadier Bardolle. Urgent. Pigny Case.’

  Picking up the telephone, Pel asked for Mongy. The weather was warm again and his lunch had been a good one so that he was almost drowsing when the telephone came to life.

  ‘MONGY! BRIGADIER BARDOLLE!’

  Bardolle had the vocal cords of a loud-hailer and nobody, it seemed, had ever instructed him in the use of the telephone. His bellow left Pel with ringing ears.

  Holding the receiver well away from his head, he answered quietly in the hope that his example would be followed, but Bardolle didn’t seem to catch on and went on in the same iron voice, as if he were on the bridge of a ship hailing the shore.

  ‘Those pictures in the paper,’ he said. ‘Of that Pigny girl. I’ve had a man in here who says he knows her.’

  Pel sat up. ‘He does? Who is he?’

  ‘Type who runs the bar. She was with a man in his place a month ago.’

  ‘A month ago!’ Pel’s eyebrows shot up. This made things different! If she were seen in Mongy only a month before, that mystery life of hers the newspapers were wondering about had probably been conducted somewhere ne
ar Mongy. And anywhere near Mongy was a good place to conduct a mystery life, because Mongy was close to Arne and was lost in an area north-east of the city full of deep valleys and thick woods. It was populated chiefly by a farming community which minded its own business, and was just the sort of place that a girl like Dominique Pigny, who seemed to prefer to live her life in her own way, would choose. And if she’d been seen with a man in the local bar, it was more than likely that he, not someone in Brittany, had been responsible for her death. The news threw the ball squarely into Pel’s court.

  Calling for Aimedieu, who had been told by Darcy never to take his eyes off Pel, he stuffed notebook and pencils into his pocket and followed them with a spare packet of Gauloises in case he finished the one already on his person. Avoid situations where he would want to smoke, the government pamphlet had said. As a policeman, there was a fat chance of anything like that.

  As Aimedieu swung the car out of the Rue de la Liberté and round the Porte Guillaume, a couple of pedestrians did a hop, skip and jump for the pavement.

  ‘You nearly got those two,’ Pel said dryly.

  Aimedieu’s choirboy face was expressionless. ‘It keeps them on their toes, Patron,’ he said.

  ‘What happens if you hit them?’

  ‘They’re a lot quicker next time. It’s different here from Paris, of course. Here it’s just a sport. In Paris, they expect to be knocked down.’

  Despite his innocent looks, Pel decided, Aimedieu was quite a wit.

  As they roared down from the Langres plateau into Drax, Pel remembered Didier and realised that this was the day when he’d arranged to take his girl friend, Louise Bray, to the caves. Doubtless there was more than merely geology about the dark interior to interest them.

  Mongy was some distance further on, situated in a deep valley surrounded by woods. With the afternoon sun on it, it was not just warm, it was hot. The police substation, a flat-fronted building flying the tricolour over the doorway, was just off the main square, the entrance up a short flight of steps. Inside was a desk and a switchboard manned by a policeman. Pel knew they’d arrived at the right spot at once because he could hear a voice that twanged like a banjo coming from an office along the corridor. Every word was clear.

  ‘Look,’ it was saying, ‘it doesn’t matter what your client says. The wheels were missing and the tyres were found on your client’s car… Of course I can identify them. He’d just had two of them replaced. He’d ordered them from the garage here and they’d written his name on them for when he left his car. In yellow chalk. It was still there when I found them. Your client ought to get glasses.’

  ‘Brigadier Bardolle?’ Pel said to the man behind the desk.

  The policeman nodded. ‘He’s busy,’ he said. ‘A tyre stealing case. He’s talking to a lawyer in Châtillon.’

  Pel sniffed. ‘Why doesn’t he use the telephone?’ he asked.

  Bardolle brought his conversation to a close, slammed the telephone down on its rest with a crash that suggested it had been left in pieces, and appeared in the corridor, glowering and muttering to himself. He had a figure that went with his voice because he was almost as wide as he was high, with a chest like a brewery dray, and deep-set pale blue eyes under heavily scowling eyebrows. He reminded Pel a little of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.

  ‘Stupid con,’ he was muttering. ‘Thinking we’d fall for a story like that.’ As he saw Pel he brightened up. ‘Chief Inspector,’ he said in his tremendous iron voice. ‘Recognised you straight away!’

  His smile of welcome changed his whole face. From being a hobgoblin out of a horror story he became the sort of policeman whose arms children swung on as he saw them across the road.

  ‘This man—’ Pel began.

  ‘Got him right here, sir! Well, not here. just along the street. Fifty yards from this very spot. Bar Giorgiou.’

  Pel glanced at Aimedieu. ‘Bar Giorgiou 8 p.m.,’ the letter found in Dominique Pigny’s pocket had said. They seemed to have struck gold.

  ‘Norbert Hilaire,’ Bardolle was saying. ‘Old soldier. Like me. Straight as they come. He won’t have you on.’

  ‘He’d better not,’ Pel said.

  Bardolle looked at his watch. ‘Just come right, too,’ he said. ‘Heat of the afternoon. Cold beer would go down well.’

  The bar was cool and Norbert Hilaire looked just what Bardolle had said he was. He was teak-faced and his back was straight and, like Bardolle, he had the stature of a carthorse. Harnessed together, they wouldn’t have looked amiss pulling a plough.

  He gestured to a table and, as they sat down, he appeared alongside them with four cold beers.

  ‘This girl—’ Pel began.

  Hilaire glanced at Bardolle. ‘I saw her picture and went along to see Gabriel here.’

  Pel looked at Bardolle. Somehow he didn’t look like a Gabriel. More like an Achille or a Ulysse. A Ferdinand at the very least.

  ‘We’re old friends,’ Hilaire went on. ‘He was the first guy I thought of.’

  ‘And the girl?’

  ‘Well, I’m certain it’s the one whose picture was in the paper.’

  ‘Do you know her well?’

  ‘No. I only saw her once. But it was a night when there was nothing doing and I had plenty of chance to study her. These two were the only people in the place and they were here a long time. They had a meal. We do omelettes and chicken and things like that. They arrived about eight o’clock.’

  ‘Are you certain it was this girl?’ Pel laid the pictures Madame Charnier had given him on the table.

  Hilaire studied them carefully. ‘Certain,’ he said.

  ‘Did you hear her name?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Only her first name.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘The man called her Dominique.’

  Pel nodded, satisfied he was on the right track. ‘Did you hear what they were talking about?’

  ‘Not really,’ Hilaire said. ‘I wasn’t listening. But I couldn’t help hearing bits. They seemed to be quarrelling.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I don’t know. She seemed to be wanting him to do something and he didn’t seem to want to.’

  ‘Did you hear the man’s name?’

  ‘No.’ Hilaire frowned, trying to cast his mind back. ‘I don’t think she ever called him by his proper name. At least, not so that I could hear. I got the impression that he’d been her boy friend, perhaps living with her, and she’d given him up. That’s what I thought, but I might be wrong. It might have been some other guy.’

  ‘Did they mention Brittany?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Going there. Visiting it. Something like that.’

  ‘I didn’t hear them.’

  ‘Had she a suitcase with her?’

  ‘I didn’t see one.’

  ‘Did either of them mention Beg Meil?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘Any other names?’

  ‘I heard the man say something about his house at Villiers.’

  Pel looked at Bardolle. ‘There’s a Villiers round here somewhere, isn’t there?’

  ‘That’s right. Villiers-sur-Orche. Just to the north. My cousin runs the substation there. Brigadier Delhaye.’

  The backwoods of Burgundy were like the backwoods of Brittany, it seemed. Everybody was related.

  ‘We’d better have a few enquiries made there,’ Pel said.’ ‘What was this man like?’

  ‘Big type. Hair on the long side. Broad shoulders, a bit stooping. Looked as though a couple of extra years in the army would have done him good. And temper? More than once I thought I ought to throw them out before they started hurling the crockery at each other. But they always seemed to calm down just before they got to that stage and even started smiling at each other. Weird? You ought to have seen them.’

  ‘What about the girl?’

  ‘She was doing all the talking and he seemed to be doing all the listening.’

  ‘Anything else you
can remember about him? Something we could use to identify him. Did he have a car?’

  ‘I didn’t see it.’

  ‘Clothes?’

  ‘Just clothes. Jeans and a windcheater. They all wear jeans and windcheaters.’ Hilaire spoke with contempt. ‘And cowboy boots. He was wearing those.’

  ‘Everybody west of the Iron Curtain wears cowboy boots these days,’ Pel said dryly.

  ‘It had been raining,’ Hilaire went on. ‘And the girl had a red plastic mackintosh on.’

  ‘She still had it on when she was found. It’s the man I’m interested in.’

  ‘He – yes, of course—’ Hilaire’s expression became excited ‘—he wore a beard—’

  ‘They all do nowadays.’

  ‘—and he had a birthmark on his face. About here.’ Hilaire’s hand touched his cheek just alongside his ear.

  ‘Nose? Eyebrows? Jaw?’

  ‘Just a nose. Not much in the way of eyebrows. Jaw – you couldn’t see it for the hair. He didn’t look the sort of guy I’d want my daughter to marry.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He was scruffy. I bet when he did his military service he was the bane of his sergeant’s life. I bet he spent all his time dodging duty and avoiding keeping himself clean.’

  Pel frowned. Hilaire seemed to have Le Bihan’s habit of making up backgrounds for people.

  ‘He talked too loudly, too,’ Hilaire was saying. ‘And he laughed too much.’

  ‘On drugs, would you say?’

  ‘I don’t know people on drugs.’ Looking at Hilaire’s hard honest face, Pel could well believe it. ‘But he might have been.’

  ‘Smoke?’

  Pel was thinking of cannabis but it turned out to be Marlboro, because the bearded man had bought a packet from Hilaire. All the same, the description seemed to make sense. Perhaps Dominique Pigny had lived with the man, thrown him over and tried to start a new life and they were quarrelling because of it. Pel stopped dead. Name of God, it was infectious. First Le Bihan, then Hilaire. Now he was at it.